


Broken Mirrors

by samalander



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Friendship/Love, Gen, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:38:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor collects memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emmypenny (burritosong)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/burritosong/gifts).



> I set out to write a Donna Noble story for emmypenny's birthday, because she loves Donna and she is Donna in some ways, but along the road this happened, and so I don't know. Instead she gets and Amy story, one that hopefully deals with some of what I see as sad and makes it that much happier.

_Doctor, do you have a room?_

The first time Amy finds the Memory Room, it's for her. She doesn't know it at the time, of course, but the TARDIS does, because it shows her pictures of a man she's never seen before. She leaves quickly, because she is crying at one of them, a dopey smile on the man's face and a pain in her heart.

She bumps into the Doctor in the hall outside, and he casts a dubious look at the door.

"You know where we should go?" he says, and Amy finds herself following the impossible man away from his impossible room and back into Time.

That night Amy meets Vincent Van Gogh.

\---

With all the hulabaloo around the Pandorica and Rory and a wedding and the rest, Amy forgets about the Memory Room. She doesn't have space to hold it. But after House takes over the TARDIS and she and Rory find their new digs, Amy has to look around. She can't stay still, in her bed with her ladder, and she can’t sleep.

She doesn’t know why she got annoyed at Rory for his question. The Doctor doesn’t have a room, of course. The Doctor has All Of The Rooms, is all of the rooms, he makes them and deletes them and one time his library was in the swimming pool.

So Amy climbs down from the top bunk (She likes it better up there, like her own personal turret in a castle of everything) and wanders.

The door shouldn't seem so familiar, because the last time she saw it was before the Doctor rebooted the universe. But she's a time traveler, and that makes her special, so she pushes the handle down and walks in.

The Doctor is inside this time, placing a blue bow next to a 1960s-style military hat.

"What's all this, then?" Amy asks, and is honestly surprised that the Doctor looks shocked at the sound of her voice.

"It's nothing," he says, and moves like he's going to push her out of the room. Amy ducks under his arm and darts in, taking in the store of, well, junk.

"It's bits and bobs," he amends, "Things I pick up here and there."

Amy studies her friend closely, looking for something, but she doesn't know what. "Since when are you sentimental?"

"I'm not sentimental," he scoffs, and grins his brilliant grin. "I'm a collector."

"You're a magpie, you are," she says, reaching for something shiny she sees on a table. The Doctor catches her hand.

"Don't," he warns, and his tone is stern enough to stop her amusement.

"Doctor, what is this place?"

He sighs. "You, always with the questions. 'What is this place', 'Did you wish really hard', 'Can I have a biscuit.' This is my place, and that's what you need to know."

"Then what do you collect here, in your place?"

He runs his hand over a piece of purple fabric – a jacket, Amy thinks, and her heart breaks a little at the look on his face. "Memories," he says, and leaves her alone in the room.

\---

Amy doesn’t talk about the room to Rory or the doctor for a long while because there's Flesh and there's kidnappings and babies and a whole load of Things To Do before they have time to talk about rooms again.

She's looked for the room from time to time, but the door seems to come and go, like these things do. When she finds the Memory Room the third time, Amy is thinking about her daughter.

The room has changed since it was the Doctor's room that time, his memory collection, but Amy knows what it is all the same, the way the air feels and the engines seem to fade.

This time a number of portraits line the walls, faces smiling and not. She sees her own portrait near the front, her ginger hair practically glowing.

"It's not that bright," she mutters running a hand through it, and reads the inscription "Orangey Girl" with some confusion. Rory is there, too, called "Pretty" and then a whole line of people she's never seen, interspaced with a few she has (There, that's River, when she's River, and that's Canton there, called "Sad One" and there's someone who looks familiar but Amy can’t place.)

"So you've found the Tree House, then"

She turns to acknowledge the Doctor. "Tree house?"

"Tree House," he says, wiping a speck of dust from the portrait of someone called "The Bride" who is almost as ginger as Amy is. "Little boys, lived in trees. Peter Pan. Lost Boys. This is my Tree House, my Hall of Lost Boys."

"Doctor, most of these people are women."

He shrugs. "So they can’t be lost boys?"

Amy laughs the laugh that she only has for the Doctor. "Oh, right. Of course. Your pets? Other- friends? Ones who traveled?"

He shrugs and straightens the frame of "The Brigadier", who is wearing the hat Amy remembers from the last time she saw this room. "You could call them that," he says. "Are you in the mood for a game of darts? I asked Rory, but he said he had things to do. All of space and time, and he has none of it to play darts in the TARDIS. Pond, I worry about your husband."

"No changing the subject," she snaps because she's damn well tired of it, the way he never answers a question straight. "What happened to the others?"

The Doctor gives her a look, such a look that her heart wants to break because suddenly he seems so, so very old, old like the Star Whale, like the crack in her wall.

"What do you want to know? Peri married Yrcanos, Astrid is traveling as dust, Rose is in another dimension, Donna can't ever remember, and most of the rest left _me_ , Pond. Most of them leave _me_ because they hate this life, because they need a family, because they're so. Very. Human."

"You're emotional," she says, because she thinks her heart is breaking at the pain in his voice, and there's nothing else she can muster.

"And why not?" he's near to shouting, but she doesn't think he cares. "It's what you'll do, too, you and your husband in there. Go home, have babies, all that. Can't have a life like mine with a family, can we?"

She's not sure later how she gets to be next to him or why her arms are wrapped around him, but Amy finds in the next moment that her arms are solidly wrapped around her Raggedy Doctor, holding him as tightly as she can.

"We can," she whispers, as his arms respond and wrap around her in return. "We do. Me and Rory and you. And your blue box."

"It's a poor family," he scoffs. "Not exactly having babies now is it?"

"I think you make a fine mother," she says, and he holds her tighter for a moment before letting go, laughter returned to his eyes and the traces of age erased form the lines on his face.

"Darts?" he asks, and Amy grins and follows him to the control room.

She makes sure to close the door behind her as they leave the Memory Room, the Tree House, whatever it is today, and the room makes sure to phase back into the fabric it came from. But if she were ever to find the room again, to see the portraits and their names, Amelia Pond would find her own caption changed.

 _Sister_.


End file.
